The Skinner box was a specifically designed apparatus that involved a rat, a lever, and food pellets. The experiments done in the Skinner box (named after its inventor, Burrhus Frederic Skinner) provided the world with a really important scientific reason for why parents might want to strongly consider being consistent with their children.
Burrhus Skinner placed a rat in a specially designed box. The box had a lever that was linked to a food dispenser. The rat was eventually trained to press the lever to get food – but of course psychologists aren’t easily impressed, and once they got the rat to learn how to press a lever to get food, they took the experiment to another level.
Skinner wanted to find out how to train the rat to constantly push down on the lever. He tried a couple different things. First he tried releasing a food pellet every time the rat pressed the lever. Unfortunately for Burrhus, that only taught the rat to push the lever when the rat was hungry, however, and Skinner wanted him to essentially become addicted to pressing the lever – so he tried other ways.
Ultimately, Skinner did find a way to get the rat to keep pushing on the lever. He did it through a means that was aptly named a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. That’s fancy psychology talk for “random.” In other words, when the rat would push down on the lever and randomly get food, he never knew when the food was coming – so he kept on pushing the lever.
Sounds a little bit like how slot machines are designed in casinos, right? That’s because it is. So what does this have to do with parenting? Well first off, parents should avoid taking their children to casinos, (but the age minimum in casinos probably already helps with that). All kidding aside, the point is this – if a child hears a parent say “no,” – but “no” only randomly actually means “no,” then he or she is likely to keep on asking for something.
If as parents we tell our children “no” until they keep asking for something, and then we eventually give in, then we have taught our children (much like Burrhus taught his rats) that “no” actually means “maybe – keep asking.” If instead, we want our words to mean more to our children, then we might want to consider following through with what we say. Now, of course it’s not likely that parents can be 100% consistent because life certainly gets in the way, but just because 100% is not likely, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to be as consistent as possible.
The alternative is to not attempt to be consistent – and, well, Burrhus’s experiments have shown us why that might not be such a good idea….